Back Home With Grandma

January 22, 2000

Beyond a certain point in any confrontation, prudence and restraint turn into spinelessness. Thanks to its compulsive waffling, the Clinton administration has turned the Elian Gonzales tragedy into a long-running mess.

It is way past time for the administration to enforce U.S. law, send Elian back--possibly with his grandmothers who just arrived in New York--and put an end to this national embarrassment.

To the last one, legal experts concur that under current immigration law, Elian should have been reunited with his father in Cuba at once. That's certainly what would have happened if he had been Haitian, Chinese or anything other than Cuban.

Both Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner agree, but so far they have failed to back up their decisions with action.

Their hand-wringing instead has emboldened opponents--the fire-breathing exile politicos in Miami and their allies in the GOP--to resort to ever more ludicrous maneuvers, to accomplish nothing but delay the child's departure indefinitely.

Elian has been subpoenaed to appear in Congress, where there is also talk of granting him honorary U.S. citizenship.

Hard to tell which would be the more egregious misuse of congressional power: issuing a subpoena for a little kid or granting him an unsolicited honor usually reserved for giants the likes of Winston Churchill and Mother Teresa.

By granting visas to the grandmothers, one suspects the administration hopes that through a heart-rending Kodak moment--perhaps a tearful reunion with Elian, followed by a nationwide "ahhh" of relief--this saga would resolve itself.

Don't count on it: Neither Elian's relatives nor the more intransigent Cuban-American organizations in Miami are going to let either Castro or Clinton off the hook that easily.

Indeed, neat solutions are few and they are getting scarcer as this case drags on. The administration should insist that Elian's grandmothers not go back to Cuba without him.

Any further delay only mocks U.S. law--and the universal human instinct that this little boy belongs with his dad in Cuba, to enjoy what's left of his childhood.